The Seattle Police Officers' Guild has been granted a restraining order to keep the city from releasing photos of all its officers.

The city was about to release the photos to a police watchdog website, the union believes doing so would put officers lives at risk.

In January of 2015, a camera recorded a Seattle bike patrol officer pepper spraying a high school teacher taking part in an M.L.K. Day demonstration. That incident triggered a public records researcher, Drew Hendricks, to obtain photos of all bike patrol officers to help identify them.

"We had incidents where bicycle officers attack demonstrators and didn't have name tags clearly visible of these incidents," said Hendricks.

Hendricks said his public records request was denied because he was not a legitimate journalist.

So he enlisted the help of a police watchdog website called Photography Is Not a Crime, who resubmitted the request.

Seattle Police was about to release the photos when the Seattle Police Officers Guild filed a temporary restraining order late Thursday.

S.P.O.G. argued "The photos increase the likelihood of any and all safety threats by providing a substantial step to those who wish harm to the employees of the Seattle Police Department. This is further supported by recent threats to law enforcement across the country and Seattle"

While declining an interview, S.P.O.G.'s president cited several examples of ongoing threats, such as the ISIS kill list targeting Minnesota police officers, and a threat by Anonymous a week ago. After Mayday protests, Anonymous called for hackers to target the IP addresses of several Seattle police organizations.

SPOG said it was forced to take down its website after several online attacks.

Hendricks insists his request for photos doesn't jeopardize any officer's safety.

"The face of a police officer doesn't make them more targetable or less targetable," said Hendricks. "I still don't know where they live because of what their face looks like."

Hendricks says both Olympia police and the Washington State Patrol have already released photos of their bike patrol officers.

Copyright 2016 KING